Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 418, The Bucket and the Moon.

In 1976, an academic named Nishikawa Kyoto published a book, which is what academics are

supposed to do, so not particularly remarkable in a lot of ways.

The subject of this book was the Chin Sol, a term best

translated as proxy statue. This was a type of art associated with the Zen Buddhist tradition

in Japan, where statues of Buddhist religious figures are depicted in their ceremonial robes,

the goal being to portray the essence of said figures

to their disciples after the former's death. Creating them requires impressive care and craft,

as well as extreme familiarity with the visage of the original figure in question. When completed,

the effect of the chinsle is quite striking. The statues look so realistic that if photographed from a position where the statue qualities themselves are not visible,

they really do look like a photograph of the person in question.

I'll post an example in the show notes. It's really very cool.

Among all the various photos of his research that Nishikawa included in his book,

one stood out to a lot of academics working on medieval Japan.

Because while the subject of the statue looked a lot like, well, all of the others,

shaved head, eyes closed in meditations, monks' robe draped around them,

the subject was different from all the's robe draped around them, the subject was

different from all the others because a unique among them, she was a woman.

Her name was Mugai Njoldai, also sometimes known as Mujaku, those would be Dharma names,

in other words names taken upon joining the Buddhist priesthood. She lived from 1223 to 1298 CE during Japan's Kamakura period,

and she is a remarkable and fascinating person both for what she accomplished herself

and for what she represents.

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